Shattered Skies
by thefoodfoodfood
Summary: Amidst the fires of MEDUSA, storm clouds gather over the Great Hunting Ground. Tom and Hester take to the Bird Roads, unaware of the dangers they face among hostile skies. For them as well as others, London has changed everything. Part 1 of the Interlude Trilogy. Takes place between Mortal Engines and Predator's Gold.
1. Second Sun

**SHATTERED SKIES**

Part One of the _Interlude Trilogy_

A Mortal Engines Story

Mortal Enginesby Philip Reeve

Written by thefoodfoodfood

Beta Reading by Gamemaker97

* * *

 **Part One**

* * *

 **Chapter 1**

 **Second Sun**

* * *

A new sun was rising. Every lookout in the Great Hunting Ground could spot it from the marsh-running cities of Bucharest and Sarajevo alongside the Rustwater Marshes to the six pristine tiers of Paris in the Gallic Plain. Even the raft cities of Genoa and Don Laoghaire, both in the Middle Sea, glimpsed a pale glow beyond the horizon. To the east, past the Shield Wall of Batmunkh Gompa, the phenomenon was more curious still. Anti-Tractionists from Batmunkh Tsaka to Tienjing were woken in the dead of night by an early dawn as a sickly blue sunrise appeared from the west.

North of the plains of Italia, where the majestic Alps once stood, serrated ridges of much younger, more jagged mountains were twice bathed by the twin suns of east and west. As the familiar afternoon star sank lower towards the horizon, a ghostly copy rose on the opposite border of the sky. The long shadows cast by the Shatterhorn Mountains, fangs of darkness reflecting the sharp border of the Shatterlands, disappeared under the glow of the new beacon.

Only a few roving towns and hamlets experienced this strange blend of dawn and dusk. Small caravanserais and mining rigs that traversed the Shatterhorn peaks, each one carrying no more than a few dozen permanent inhabitants, would remember it as the day of the Second Sun, a day that either marked the dawn of a new age, or the dusk of their own. For one observer, forgotten among the slopes of a downtrodden ridge, it was a rather unexpected birthday.

Half-buried in dry mud among the rocky incline near the apex of the ridge, two blank holes stared at the rising sun to the East. The empty eye sockets, long since bereft of life, had observed many mornings over the years, but never was it so pale, or in the late afternoon. A jolt of movement brushed off the dirt and grime covering what appeared to be a long-forgotten corpse, or at least parts of one. It was propped up at an odd angle along a sharp rock sheared from the ground by the motions of a long-since passed city, with a right leg buried in the dirt and a left one that ended at the shin. Its long, spindly arm, the right one, was twisted horribly and missing a hand, while the other one simply didn't exist. The torso was barely recognizable as a huge gash, wide enough to show the earth behind it, extended from the right shoulder almost to the waist. The head was barely held on by what was left of the spine, tendons, and other cords connected to the base of the skull.

Despite the wreckage, the carcass moved again, shivering under the pale light of the afternoon sunrise. The arm seemed to grope for its missing hand while the legs danced an incoherent jig in a futile attempt to move. The eyes, dimmed long ago, now sparked, flickered, and gleamed once more. Two green orbs stared out at the world for the first time in decades, burnt out suns that, under the blue glow of this evening dawn, burnt with a new flame of a sickly hue. It was no longer a corpse, but a husk, an empty ruin revived under the strange radiations of the Second Sun. Garbled thoughts flowed through the machinations of its brain, with circuits and synapses firing for the first time in what felt like millennia. It wasn't alive, but it was no longer quite dead.

The thing, a combination of preserved flesh and strange machinery, attempted to turn its head away from the eastern sky, which was fast dimming as this new sun's short life reached its autumn. It wanted to see its body, assess the damage. As it tried to work the servos and muscle that remained, the head twisted at an unnatural angle as if it would fall to the earth, the skull's cheek resting upon the torn chest of the once lifeless cadaver. Its ancient brain, twice deceased and twice reborn, was bereft of any thoughts as to who it once was, where it currently lay, how it came to be in this state, or what that strange star, now a pale blue dot on the horizon, could be. One thought, one directive made itself clear, and with a voice not spoken in almost 30 years came two words that ground like two steel beams rubbed together.

 **"MUST REPAIR"**

And so the husk set about this task, with the single mindedness of a machine and the errant twitches of reanimated tissue. It propped its head back atop the stump of its neck and, with effort, raised its buried leg from the ground, exposing a limb wrapped in pale flesh with metal and bone exposed at odd places. Now that that was done, it tried, unsuccessfully, to stand. It clawed at the ground with its limbs and managed to drop itself face-down in the dirt. Face-down, that is, if its head had stayed atop its perch. It lay on the ground connected to the ruined torso by only a few wires, and the green eyes spotted the missing pieces of its body strewn about the rocky slope.

As the Second Sun faded and died, the green-eyed creature set about the long, grueling process of putting itself back together. It would take months, years even, until it could wander the Great Hunting Ground again. Twice the Stalker was Resurrected, and the second time was harder than the first.


	2. Victory upon the Shield Wall

**Chapter 2**

 **Victory upon the Shield Wall**

* * *

Sathya Kuranath watched as the blue sun in the west finally faded into the night. Atop the mighty Shield Wall of Batmunkh Gompa, cries of frightened astonishment turned to cheers of relief and joy as word spread that the horrible Old Tech weapon MEDUSA had backfired, how it destroyed London instead of arching out over a hundred miles of cratered Out Country to obliterate them. The few brave soldiers of Shan Guo who stayed to protect Batmunkh Gompa even in the face of certain death were awash with celebration. Sathya, however, was not.

Her hands gripped the concrete sill of Tower Three's largest embrasure, a window four thousand feet above the Out Country before her, high enough for Sathya to see the steel helmeted men and women along the battlements. While only minutes before they had recused themselves behind the wall's crenellation or within its many pillboxes, they all filtered out onto the walkway, staring and pointing between the steel-capped merlons that serrated the parapet like a giant set of teeth. Many of them were just as young as Sathya, compelled by a perhaps foolish desire to defend their homeland even in the face of almost certain annihilation. The prayers they had given before of salvation and deliverance were answered, and new offers of gratitude to the many deities of Shan Guo were in order. But for now, after all they had been through on this dreadful night, a dawn of hope came early and celebration was in order. They hugged each other and cheered as the light of London's pyre grew dim. Alone in one of the Shield Wall's great towers, Sathya shared none of their relief or joy. With no enemy to fight and no fires to extinguish, grief returned to Sathya, reminding her of what, of who, she had lost.

' _If Anna were here_ ,' Sathya's thoughts again turned to the late aviatrix, ' _she would know what to say. She would be cheering, give a grand speech, take me up on the Jenny Haniver and we'd see London for ourselves._ ' Her face, stained by tears and blackened by soot, trembled in the face of the dying light. After all that had happened, with the Northern Air Fleet burned and Anna dead… It didn't seem right to see London's folly light up the night without her by her side. It was a hollow victory, to the point where Sathya couldn't honestly say she wouldn't have preferred MEDUSA to have succeeded this night. To send her to the Sunless Country alongside Anna. Sathya's breaths were shallow and quick, and if she had any more tears to spill she would have broken down again, were it not for the voice she heard behind her.

"Commander Kuranath?" Sathya turned to see a cadet about her age, at the door of the stairwell. His shoulders rose and fell with his deep breaths, as he had run a fair distance along the Shield Wall and up the many steps to the top of Tower Three, but he was not yet exhausted, where for many such a climb would leave them gasping for air in the high altitude. Unlike the soldiers celebrating along the wall, he seemed hardly fazed by the dim blue glow disappearing beyond the west horizon. He gave a short, practiced bow typical of the Shan Guo military.

"At ease, cadet," Sathya responded with a voice that wasn't hers. Hours of yelling and crying through the smoke of the High Eryies had left it ragged and hoarse, sounding much older than her usual teenage self. She tried to appear strong or authoritative, but her uniform was ripped in several places and singed along the sleeves and one of her arms still clung to the embrasure, propping up her quivering body. The past two days had been the worst in her life, including those she spent as a child in Kerala. She hadn't slept in over forty hours, working around the clock to pull injured airmen and burned bodies out of the wreckage of the Northern Air Fleet, organizing a defense, and waiting for London to kill them all. She was tired.

"We have official confirmation from one of the scouting teams that the barbarian city has been destroyed," the junior officer told her with a small smile of relief and pride. He didn't seem to notice his commanding officer's weakened state, or at least it didn't show upon his long, ochre face. "Lieutenant Dzhu at the Forward Outpost wired us the message after observing the city from a surveillance balloon. London is no more," he stood there expectantly, waiting for an expression of gratitude, or at least relief from Sathya. None came.

"Is that all?" she asked, still unwilling to acknowledge the fact that she no longer faced inevitable death at the hands of London. The cadet's smile, small as it was, disappeared.

"Captain Khora has been asking for you, I ran here from the hospital at Tower Five," Sathya's eyes widened, and the cadet quickly continued, "He's quite alright, according to the surgeon. They've stopped the bleeding and drained away the air leaking from his lung. He wishes to speak with you. I can escort you if you wish."

Normally, Sathya would have rejected such an offer, but as she took her first step away from the embrasure she nearly stumbled to the floor. She drew herself back up, ignoring the cadet's outstretched hand, and nodded in reply, following the junior officer with a stiff gait down the steps of Tower Three. As they descended, Sathya asked him his name with her shaky voice.

"Officer Cadet Jiang Xiang Naga, at your service."

* * *

Naga led Sathya out onto the walkway atop the wall. Even though every one of Shan Guo's defenders lined the parapet and cheered as the last light of London went dark, the path along the top of the Shield Wall was relatively empty. Few soldiers had stayed behind to man the battlements, each with their own reasons. Many stayed because they didn't believe in London's superweapon while others thought that, no matter what MEDUSA was, the brave men manning the artillery on the wall would never fail as long as the spirit of its builder, Lama Batmunkh, protects them. Only a few of the soldiers who stayed accepted that it was a suicidal act and were much relieved or disappointed to find that was not the case. Naga, however, stayed because of Sathya.

Both Naga and Sathya had attended Shan Guo's military college at Seven Tiger Mountain, a training facility for officer candidates of the Anti-Traction League. There, living and learning among the Mountains of Heaven, Naga first met Sathya, as the Keralan girl was entered into the college under the patronage of Feng Hua herself. She quickly outpaced many of the other students, becoming the youngest Wing Commander to ever serve as part of the Northern Air Fleet. That kind of talent and drive attracts admirers, and Naga was one of many. Sathya cared little for their courtships, and most gave up pursuit, but Naga was always there, and he was here, now, one of the few who stayed to fight London even with its terrible weapon. He just wished she remembered him at all.

He had no family to speak of, or, more accurately, to speak to. Naga's parents served as part of the Anti-Tractionist garrison at the Spitzbergen Static up north, and he had not seen them since he was a child. They had entered him into the college at Seven Tiger Mountain before accepting administration positions at Spitzbergen, and, aside from a few letters every other month, haven't communicated with him since he was twelve. Without parents to look to, the military served as his family. His commanding officers were his true parents and his fellow cadets his brothers and sisters. Sathya, however was something different. The idea that a girl from the mud-covered statics of India could gain the Wind Flower's sponsorship and accomplish so much at such a young age was not something to simply applaud. It was something to idolize.

On the way to Tower Five, they passed by the crimson facade of Tower Four, whose armor was lifted from the copper-steel ram of Rothenburg, one of the largest and fiercest Traktionturnieren cities to ever roam the Great Hunting Ground. Its Lord Mayor boasted that no city armor could stop the statslanz mounted upon Rothenburg's bow. He was correct in that the city's lance was able to penetrate the layered deckplates of the Shield Wall, but forgot about the great bricks of volcanic stone behind it. Such is the hubris of cities like London and Rothenburg to attempt an attack on the Anti-Traction League. The only thing is that London nearly succeeded, a fact that would always sit in the minds of the people of Batmunkh Gompa.

* * *

Tower Five was an unassuming turret towards one end of the Shield Wall that served to house and supply many of its defenders. The few who stayed upon the wall could all be housed within its barracks and still leave half of it empty. Its hospital was likewise bereft of personnel, as all of the doctors and nurses accompanied the refugees fleeing into the mountains. Only one of the dozens of screened-off rooms remained lit, and beneath it three young combat medics treated their patient in a facility far nicer than they were ever trained for. Captain Khora, once a tall, striking African aviator, now lay bedridden, with tubes extending from the wound in his chest where Valentine's sword had run him through. An oxygen mask obscured his handsome face and an IV tube extended to a raised bag of fluids from his wrist, yet still the airman looked over to Sathya and Naga as they entered with a hidden smile. With his unrestrained hand he removed the mask from his face, much to the annoyance of his caretakers.

"Sathya," he struggled to exclaim with a wheezing voice, "I heard the news from Naga, earlier. Truly, God smiles upon us. I am glad to have stayed to see this moment." It was true that Khora could have left for Batmunkh Tsaka or Tienjing, but he refused, helping Sathya to plan the futile defense of the Shield Wall anyway. Sathya was eternally grateful for his help this night, even as he could only give advice from a surgery bed. She struggled to smile back, but only was able to poorly mask an expression of physical and emotional exhaustion.

"Thank you, Captain," Sathya mustered in reply, "I couldn't have done this without you. When everyone left…"

"It is no matter," Khora comforted, "They were frightened, and rightly so. I expect them to return soon and we must then help people back to their homes. But that is tomorrow. Today, we should all get some rest. We're going to need it."

"Sir," Naga, spoke up, "Once the refugees return, how quickly could we clear the rubble from the High Eyries for use?"

"For what purpose? The Southern Air Fleet will be here in less than a week. We have plenty of time to address that." Young cadets often had strange ideas, thinking military college counted just as much as real-world experience, but Naga seemed to have his head on his shoulders right until now.

"We must inspect the wreckage of London as soon as possible," Naga continued, "Waiting a week, or even a few days, would deprive us of a chance to see what MEDUSA was up close. Lieutenant Dzhu at the Forward Outpost has reported strange phenomena coming from the site. Balls of light, glowing mists, tongues of blue flame that seem to hang in the air, we cannot ignore this."

"If Dzhu was able to observe it, then isn't that enough?" Khora questioned, "We wouldn't need more than one airship to observe the damage."

"We don't need just one ship, we need a squadron," Naga pressed, "There could be survivors. In a week, they'll be gone, either dead or lost in the west. We can't let them be picked up by another barbarian city. What if they find a way to recreate MEDUSA? We cannot let that happen!"

Sathya had, until this point, not considered the idea that this battle was not yet over, that there could be survivors. A cold anger filled her chest as she remembered the two Tractionist thieves who had stolen the _Jenny Haniver_ while Anna's body was still warm. They could still be out there. The London barbarians could still be worming their way out of the wreckage and make their way to live comfy lives aboard other cities. She shuddered as her mind grappled a new possibility. Valentine might still live.

"You are out of line, Cadet," Khora warned, "Every ship in the Northern Air Fleet has been destroyed. We don't have a single airship, let alone a squadron."

"We don't, but the refugees do," Sathya said, much to Khora's astonishment, "We can commandeer a few dozen for an expeditionary force."

"What?" Khora wheezed between coughs, "You can't just…"

"As acting commander of the Shield Wall, I can and I will." Sathya was forceful now, "Naga will round up as many airships as we need. We'll need them all by tomorrow and supplied and equipped by the next day. In three days' time, we set out for London."


	3. Next Stop: Ground Zero

**Chapter 3**

 **Next Stop: Ground Zero**

* * *

Fire was everywhere. Not the mellow, orange tongues of flame that casts its surroundings in a warm glow, nor the angry yellow sprites that exist only in passing instants of vicious heat. The fire that enveloped the city of London was pale, like shards of glass glittering in an invisible explosion. Varying shades of blue and white danced alongside the molten tiers, drawing a blurred line between a blaze and an aroura that threatened the very concept of color itself. It was beautiful, yet fleeting, like an oil painting set aflame. Molten tiers and shattered buildings revealed the city like intricate layers of pigments craftily set by the likes of Walmart Strange or Ruan Solent coming undone, one brushstroke at a time.

The city wore a halo of ceaseless lightning, the air itself fracturing around a great funeral pyre. Where the ancient cathedral of St. Paul once stood, a proud beacon of London's past that hid an ancient weapon of terrible power, a spire of white light extended, disappearing into the heavens. The city, pierced by the very spear it intended to throw at its enemies, shrieked like a dying beast, awash with agony and despair as its five thousand mile journey from the bed of the Old North Sea ended in catastrophic tragedy. London, the first of the great traction cities, had finally come to a permanent stop after five-hundred and twenty-seven years.

* * *

For the seventeen occupants of the 8.56 elevator from Circle Park to Tartarus Row, there was nothing to amiss at first when the clock struck nine. As the elevator left the station at Quirke Circus, the familiar ring of Big Brian, the ancient, enormous bell housed within the Merchants' Tower above the Guildhall began to toll. After the first of the low, shuddering chimes, the eight Engineers in the room fidgeted slightly. As irrational as it was, none of them wished to miss this moment, yet all of them were called to other areas of the city, far from the Top Tier.

After the second toll, one of the Apprentice Navigators glanced around nervously. Wasn't it supposed to happen by now? The Lord Mayor is nothing if not punctual.

When the third chime sounded, one of the Engineers rummaged through her coat and fished out an unadorned timepiece. Something was wrong.

Upon the fifth toll, the elevator stopped, coming to a halt somewhere between the First and Second Tiers. A purple-robed Merchant Guildsman stood up and looked around in confusion, clutching his cane tightly. Perhaps MEDUSA needed more energy than last time. The Shield Wall was a far more difficult target than Panzerstadt-Bayreuth, and they needed to temporarily shut down the elevators to fire the weapon.

By the seventh toll, almost every one of the elevator's occupants was on their feet, with the Engineers struggling to open a panel that would expose the wiring for the doors as the others watched in varying states of distress. The priest from the Father's Guild knelt on the floor in silent prayer. The nurse from the Guild of Physicians comforted her elderly patient, whose three grandchildren cried loudly at one end of the nearly empty elevator. On one of the seats, a lone Third Class Apprentice Historian gazed at the floor, consumed by the crisis within his mind, and giving only a passing acknowledgement to the one unfolding around him.

When the bell tolled an eighth time, the lights in the elevator went out.

There was no ninth toll.

In an instant, the elevator car filled with light, searing the retinas of the occupants even as their eyes slammed shut in response. A raging cacophony of sounds sliced through the air and rumbled through the floorplate. A symphony of steel, an orchestra of lurching, grinding metal, hung in the air amid a backdrop of a roar of energy. To the occupants of the 8.56 car to Tartarus Row, they might as well have been blind and deaf, as every sense they possessed simply could not process the overstimulation of this hellish world. So stunned were they that it took them a few seconds before they realized the elevator was falling.

Without sight or sound, it was impossible to know what way was up and what way was formerly up. The seventeen passengers bounced around the empty carriage of the elevator for what seemed a long while, though adrenaline and shock stretched their concepts of time quite far. Bodies hit bodies, flesh impacted steel and glass, bones broke and teeth shattered. Moments later, the world that was filled with ruthless light and torturous sound ended as quickly as it began. None of the seventeen felt the elevator crash through the roof of Tottenham Court Road station, arriving exactly on schedule. The world went from white to black in an instant, and they knew no more.

* * *

Herbert Melliphant awoke to pain. It had no clear source, nor diagnosis. One part of him felt unbearable heat while chilling numbness spread from another. His left arm felt strange and crooked, like he extended it so far that it bent the opposite direction. His right foot was the same way, twisted wrong in some odd fashion. It hurt to breathe, and he could only do so out of his mouth. His ears rang in a shrill tone, louder on one side than the other. He tried to open his eyes only to find they were already open, his vision obscured by dark spots that brightened along the edge of his line of sight. He couldn't think. No thought could conjure itself.

He lay there for a while, no way to tell how long, awash in waves of returning senses. The taste of blood, the feeling of broken glass beneath his back, the sounds of roaring flames and distant screams; the world he woke up to was not a kind one. Eventually his vision cleared, erasing an unspoken fear of blindness that plagued his mind. He tried to sit up, but failed as another wave of agony engulfed his body. He reached up his right hand to feel the wetness that covered his face and his fingers recoiled at the warm, sticky blood that it touched. His nose was a pulpy, wet mess. He looked around as best he could from his position on a floor of glass shards and twisted steel. Somehow the ceiling of the elevator carriage had become the floor, and the bodies of his fellow occupants, some of them writhing, lay near him. One of them started to stand.

It was an Engineer, a short man whose bald head sported a growing bruise nearly just as red as his Guild-mark but otherwise appeared completely fine. He inched around the people sprawled at his feet, stopping to check their pulses from time to time, shrugging his shoulders if he couldn't find one. After quickly pronouncing the elderly woman dead, Melliphant called out to him, barely managing more than a whisper.

"Over here," he choked out, coughing up a small amount of blood in the process. He tried again. "Here!" He was a bit louder now, and got the Engineer's attention.

The Engineer limped over with surprising speed, and looked over the Apprentice with scrutiny instead of concern, mumbling under his breath.

"…torn ankle ligaments, hyperextended elbow, bruised ribs, shattered nose, second-degree burns to the ear, probable loss of hearing," he babbled like this for a bit before beaming a set of yellowed teeth at him. "You'll be fine!"

Melliphant struggled with this information, hearing only half of it. He attempted to sit up once more, succeeding this time. He looked around the carriage again, illuminated with the orange glow that poured through the shattered windows.

"What happened? Did MEDUSA…" He trailed off as he noticed one of the Apprentice Navigators slumped behind the Engineer, his neck twisted at an impossible angle. The Engineer pondered for a bit before responding.

"Most probably it backfired. I knew Dr. Splay didn't do enough research on the damn thing. Only test fired it once! I swear, B Division does not know what it's doing. Well, they didn't know. I guess they still don't seeing as they're probably all atomized by now." He shrugged. "Well, let's spend less time lying around and more time finding out what's going on." He offered Melliphant his hand. "What's your name, boy?"

Melliphant took it, wincing as the small man struggled to pull him to his feet. "Herbert Melliphant, Apprentice Historian." He left out the 'Third Class' part.

The Engineer smiled. "Nice to meet you, Herbert. I am Dr. Tesco Popjoy, K-Division."

Melliphant followed the eccentric Engineer around the wrecked carriage, leaning heavily upon the dead Merchant's cane for support. The twisted mammoth ivory and Zagwan wood probably cost more than a small airship, but now it was supporting the sizable weight of a chubby Third Class Apprentice. It did the job.

Dr. Popjoy toke note of the survivors. Of the eight Engineers, four were dead, two were missing, one was still out cold, and Popjoy himself seemed fine, having been cushioned by his now-deceased comrades during the fall. The priest from the Father's Guild stirred slightly, but would not awaken. Two of the elderly woman's children remained in the elevator. Their small, broken bodies lay at one end of the carriage, where Melliphant dare not look. The rest were missing.

"They must have fallen from the elevator as it fell. A pity." Dr. Popjoy shrugged his shoulders, seemingly the only way he can express sorrow. "We should get moving."

"Moving?" Melliphant questioned, "Moving where?"

Popjoy didn't answer, leaving the elevator through an empty window frame. Melliphant followed, careful not to cut his bad leg on the shards of glass. Popjoy seemed fine, but Melliphant wondered if the bump on his head made him this way. Engineers are supposed to be rational!

Melliphant's shoes sank into the ground. He looked down, puzzled for a second, before prodding it with the cane he had taken. Mud! Somehow the elevator tumbled off of London entirely! He'd have to find a way to catch up to the city before –

His gaze shifted upward. His breath caught in his mouth. London wasn't gone. It was everywhere around him. The columns of Tier Three, the airdocks of Base Tier. All of it was here. All of it was burning.

Melliphant fell to his knees, sobbing tearlessly.


	4. The Himalayan Pass

**Chapter 4**

 **The Himalayan Pass**

* * *

Alone among the Himalayas, the _Jenny Haniver_ rode the air currents into the west. Without functioning engines, the airship was powerless, a slave to the erratic winds that broke upon the mountains in an invisible tide that howled between the jagged peaks. Among the giant spires of ice-capped stone, the _Jenny_ was but a mote of dust, its scarlet gasbag sticking out like an errant drop of paint on a colorless canvas of white and grey. Skimming the sides of the snow-clad summits, the crew of the _Jenny Haniver_ found themselves regretting their decision to fly so close to the mountains.

"You said this was a short-cut!" Hester Shaw yelled over the screaming mountain wind that flooded through the _Jenny_ 's shattered windows. Her hands curled tightly around the controls, loosening only to pull various levers and switches that she had only learned the purpose of hours ago. She looked back towards the one who advised her to take this route, glaring at him behind a set of flight goggles that shielded her eye from the freezing gusts.

"All the flight maps said this was the quickest way!" Tom Natsworthy hollered back behind a huge binder filled with maps of the area. His head sported a new bandage, slightly stained with dried blood from the night before. This morning, he and Hester pored over the various flight manuals and maps of the Bird Roads, intent on learning as much as possible on their journey back to Black Island. Unfortunately in his newfound excitement, he suggested a separate route to the one they first took on the way to Batmunkh Gompa. Now, as their damaged airship flew along the slopes of the High Himalayas, he realized why Anna Fang stayed north of the ancient mountain range.

The rudders of the ship groaned as a system of pulleys and levers forced them against the wind, straining without the help of the still-inoperable engines to navigate among the walls of stone and ice that formed a labyrinth around the tiny airship. As the _Jenny_ skirted closer to the rock-face of an impossibly steep slope, the system of rudders and ailerons proved insufficient. The starboard side of the airship clipped the side of the mountain, just enough to do damage that could ultimately doom any airship to a fiery death among the rocks and snow below.

"We're losing altitude!" Hester exclaimed in a shocked voice. She barely felt the airship graze that last mountain. Tom immediately came over, gripping his still-broken ribs, looking from one cracked dial to the next.

"Gas is leaking from Cell 4. There's a patch kit in the hold somewhere. I'll have to go onto the rigging to fix it." Tom turned to leave before Hester's hand clamped onto his shoulder, stopping him in his tracks.

"I'll go. You fly the ship. Get us out of these damn mountains." The matter wasn't up for discussion. Tom was the better flyer, and with his injury, Hester was the only one able to get onto the outside of the envelope.

Hester stumbled through the airship, nearly tripping in her ill-fitting crimson flight-coat; she had found it in a closet in Anna's old cabin. She struggled up the companionway into the heart of the airship nestled between the gasbags above the gondola. There wasn't much there, only the crates filled with sealskin from the last cargo the _Jenny_ picked up in Spitzbergen as well as food and other basic provisions. She looked around, rummaging through the various containers marked in unfamiliar languages until she found a large, yellow, plastic chest marked in several languages (one of them Anglish) as ' _Emergency Supplies_ '. She fished out a crowbar from a loop on the wall and pried open the crate, rummaging through it to find what she needed.

The box had what she needed, a patch-up kit with a battery-operated resin gun, but also something she didn't expect. Something that might just get the _Jenny_ out of the mountains and steer it towards Black Island. She fished out the patch-kit and resin gun, keeping note of the other contents held within the crate.

While Hester was busy up in the envelope, Tom steered the air-vessel through the mountains, struggling with the barely-responsive controls. He thought it would be easy to fly an airship, with nothing to run into among the clouds. He didn't account for the mountain range that put those clouds in shadow, however.

Hester lashed her flight harness to the outside of the ship, latching a clip to one of the _Jenny_ 's many cable-hooks and ignoring the 'NOT FOR CLIMBING' imprint on the side of the carabiner. She climbed alongside the envelope of the airship, exiting from one of the flight-deck's missing window-frames under Tom's worrying gaze. His fears were misplaced, luckily, as Hester jumped effortlessly from one rope to the next, even as her right arm cradled the repair kit close to her chest. She didn't look down. She didn't have to. The height didn't frighten her. Be it thirty feet or thirty-thousand, she knew the stakes. For herself at least.

She climbed over, one rope at a time, towards the great wound in the _Jenny Haniver_ 's side. The entire engine pod was bent inwards, so that one of the propeller blades pierced the silicone-silk envelope and punctured one of the Spitzbergen gas-cells. Hydrogen bled from the airship into the afternoon sky. If the leak wasn't fixed, it would be the end of the _Jenny_ , and of Tom.

Hester could not allow that. She would not allow that. Looping one of the rigging ropes around her leg, she sidled over towards the gash in the gas-cell. The Jeunet-Carot aëro-engine was hopelessly off-center. Hester cursed herself for her carelessness before setting to the task of removing the offending propeller, oblivious to the obstacles just ahead of the airship. She looped the leather strap of the repair kit around her shoulder and unlatched the canvas bag, rummaging through it with one hand while the other gripped the side of the damaged engine. After finding a hefty adjustable wrench, Hester went to work on the propeller, removing the nosecone with one well-placed whack. With only a single, large nut threaded onto the shaft keeping the propeller on, Hester closed the wrench onto it and, using all of her strength and weight, began to lever the fastener off.

Tom was unaware of Hester's struggle with the propeller, trying desperately to turn the airship away from an icy cliff that lay ahead. The wind was treacherous, fighting Tom at every step. If he could get beyond this mountain, it would be smooth sailing all the way back to Black Island. As the ice-face loomed ever larger, Tom knew there was no way around it. The only option was upwards, and the only way to get the _Jenny_ above the summit was to drop weight. With this in mind, Tom locked the rudder controls and made haste towards the hold up in the envelope.

Anna never unloaded the shipment of sealskins she obtained in Spitzbergen. After meeting Tom and Hester at the trading cluster, they had left to quickly for her to sell it in the auction houses. It would have sold at a high price in most any market, but to Tom, it was dead weight, as in weight that, if he didn't get rid of it, would make him, Hester, and the _Jenny Haniver_ very dead indeed. He struggled to get each crate down the ladder, the thin air smelling like nothing but dead seal, a smell that Tom would have been happy to not be dealing with at this point. His ribs, still broken from his encounter with Shrike, ached horribly, a complaint that he fought to ignore. One by one he hauled all fifteen of the heavy, smelly crates to the back of the observation deck, a small balcony outside of Anna Fang's old quarters. One by one he lifted them up over the railing and watched them tumble wildly through the thin mountain air below.

On the envelope, Hester was making progress, having resorted to a tactic of bracing each leg against the Paris-made engine and using the whole of her weight to twist the fastener off of the propeller shaft, resetting her stance after every half-twist. After setting up for a final turn, something flickered at the edge of her vision, and she brought her head around to watch as the wooden boxes she saw in the hold tumbled end over end from the stern of the gondola. She stared, puzzled as over a dozen of them fell towards the smaller mountain peaks below, before the _Jenny_ suddenly lurched upwards, freed from the weight of its cargo. Hester fell back, twisting the wrench one last time and freeing the nut, the propeller, and herself to fall down just as the crates have into the ridges and glaciers below.

Hester fell for what seemed ages in her mind before the line between her and the gondola went taut, tugging at her harness with incredible force. She stared up in terror as the propeller followed her descent, narrowly missing her by inches as it twirled downwards towards the rocks thousands of feet below. Hester spun around helplessly, dangling a few yards below the gondola, and saw what Tom had seen. The great cliff, hidden under an impossibly white blanket of ice, was drawing ever nearer. The _Jenny Haniver_ was rising, but with a leak in one of the gas cells it wouldn't be enough to overcome the top of the ice-wall. Seeing this, Hester began to climb.

Even under the heavy leather gloves she wore, Hester's hands were rubbed raw and fully numb by the time she made it back to the gash alongside the now-propeller-less aëro engine. It took thirty precious seconds for her to dig around the canvas bag looped around her shoulder before she found what she was looking for: a large roll of airship-grade envelope fabric. She unrolled the fabric and cut the length she needed, working as quickly as possible while her fingers shook in the freezing mountain wind. As carefully as she could, she placed the fabric against the gash in the _Jenny_ 's side, even as escaping gas and howling wind fought her every move, and drew the resin gun from the pouch. A sticky gel oozed from the nozzle as she brushed the gun alongside the perimeter of the patch, closing it up as best as she could. A gentle lurch upwards signified that it was at least somewhat airtight and Hester gladly returned to the gondola, where Tom helped her back through the shattered window at the flight deck.

The patch job wasn't perfect, but it was just enough. As the wall of ice drew closer, so did the _Jenny_ float upwards, its fuselage clearing the ridge by only a few feet. Ahead of the airship lay a beautiful empty sky unmarred by the spears of earth that lay behind. As Tom returned to the controls, Hester told him of what she found up in the envelope.

* * *

It took an hour to install the sails along the gasbag of the _Jenny Haniver_ , attaching the white canvas sheets to the rigging along the envelope and extending two telescopic masts from either side of the airship's body, but a small bit of time hanging precariously on the _Jenny_ 's side was a small price for Hester to pay to get to Black Island in two days instead of two weeks. During that time, Tom spoke very little, avoiding the topic of London by avoiding conversation altogether. Hester respected the silence, knowing that while she may forever be haunted by her losses, Tom's ghosts equaled an entire city.

They slept in shifts, sharing Anna's bunk, which still smelled of spice and incense. Tom took the controls on the first night, and when Hester laid down to rest, she heard his quiet sobs of hidden grief floating from the flight-deck. Hester did not get much sleep that night.

They floated on, leaving the foothills of the Himalayas behind and watching as mountains turned to hills, hills turned to plains, and plains turned to marsh. They flew just as fast as the wind did, rolling off of the great plateau behind them and towards the Sea of Khazak. While Tom slept during the day, Hester explored the cabinets and crevices of the airship, digging through inventories written in Chinese, tribal masks from the Hundred Islands, an unabridged Zagwan Bible with all seven testaments (a gift from Khora), several Nuevo-Mayan battle Frisbees, and a cracked, browned ceramic mug with faded lettering (only the 'S', 'v', and 'I' were visible). Also there was an old hand-drawn map, labelled in Airsperanto in Anna's handwriting. Hester couldn't figure out what region was depicted on the old parchment, or even if it was oriented correctly. She put it back in its metal tube, making a note to ask Tom about it later.

The second night, Tom again found himself unable to escape his mourning. Steering the airship, or rather checking the course every now and then and changing direction as necessary, left him alone with his thoughts, thoughts that reeked of pain. He tried to think of things other than London, but almost all of the memories he had were of his fifteen years aboard the moving city. He thought of Pomeroy and Arkengarth, Pewtertide and Karuna, Nancarrow and Plym. All the Historians, gone.

He remembered Katherine, though he had only known her briefly, and his thoughts led to her father, whom he thought he had known. Anna Fang was his real idol, despite being an Anti-Tractionist. How stupid Tom was to have stopped Hester that day!

His mind turned to his peers, the other Apprentice Historians that he never really got along with. He found himself missing Clytie Potts and even Herbert Melliphant. Melliphant was nothing but cruel to him, calling him names like 'Tom Notworthy' and 'Tom Nitwit' after he had failed an exam on the Zagwan Crusades a few years ago. Without Melliphant, Tom realized, he would have never been down in the Gut the day Hester…

"Hey," came a voice from behind him, snapping him back into active thought. He turned to see Hester's unshawled face turned into what he assumed was an expression of concern. He wiped his tear-strewn cheeks and gave a half-hearted reply.

"Hi."

"Are you alright?" It was obvious that she had never had this sort of talk before. Or rather the last time she was in this situation after she and Tom were ejected from London, she was far less sympathetic. Either way, it was a new experience for both of them.

"Yeah. I'm fine." He wasn't fine. He wanted to tell her everything, everyone he missed, the people he would never see again. But this was Hester Shaw, the hardest, strongest person he ever met. She didn't ever cry, not even when Valentine slew her parents and clove her face in two. How could she know how this feels when she couldn't feel for her own parents?

And yet, Hester stayed, sitting down on an old trunk. Her eye never left Tom's face. "Tom," she said forming her words carefully, "I know I'm not the best person for this, but you can talk to me."

"What should I say?"

"Anything you want. I'll listen to everything you have to say."

Now that it was offered, Tom couldn't speak. How can you put a whole city's worth of death into words? He glanced around the moonlit cabin as he struggled to turn feelings into sounds. His mouth opened and shut uselessly. Hester tried a different approach.

"Tom, I never told you what happened on London."

"Do I want to know?"

The question was genuine. All Tom had seen was Hester, Valentine, and Katherine as they emerged atop the roof of the glowing structure of St. Paul's. Thaddeus Valentine, the man who had pushed him down into the Out-Country, killed Hester's parents in cold blood, and slew Anna Fang among the burning wreckage of the Northern Air Fleet, was clutching his bloodied daughter alongside the person who vowed to kill him. All Hester had told him was that Katherine had saved her life. Tom could only imagine what went on beneath the cobra-hood of MEDUSA's cathedral. Many of those imaginations he dare not linger on. Was Katherine's killer, London's killer, sitting before him?

"After the _13_ _th_ _Floor Elevator_ crashed, I thought you were dead." Hester started, eyes cast downwards, "I thought it was the _Jenny_ … I was captured by some Stalkers."

Tom looked at her quizzically, "I thought Shrike was the last one."

"So did I." Hester sighed, still mourning the loss of her strange, adoptive parent, "These ones were newer, but they looked cheaper. Crome probably had them built after studying Shrike."

Hester continued her story, "They took me into the cathedral. Valentine and Crome were there. My hands were bound. They were about to fire MEDUSA when they brought me in. I remember something about a clearance code. Valentine drew his sword, and then…"

Her voice caught on something like a sleeve on a doorknob. She didn't realize that her eye started to water, but she quickly wiped it away and continued, her voice taking a more solemn tone.

"Someone, a girl, jumped in front of his blade." Tom's eyes widened and his mouth opened, but Hester continued, "She, I guessed she was his daughter, fell onto one of the control panels. The machine, MEDUSA, it must have gone haywire. Everyone was running around… I had to help her, help Katherine. She looked so much like me! Valentine cut me free and I saw the _Jenny_ … We ran up the steps as quickly as we could, but it was too late…"

Hester's story trailed off, and Tom sat there, not knowing what to think. Somehow Hester's concern for Katherine overpowered her hate for the girl's father. In some strange fashion, it was Katherine who destroyed London. He grappled with this information mentally and emotionally, before Hester spoke again.

"Katherine saved me, Tom." Her hand went to his shoulder, "and, though she didn't intend it, she saved all those people at Batmunkh Gompa. Nobody knew that London would be destroyed. That's Crome's fault, not yours, not mine, and not Katherine's. She's the real hero."

Tom couldn't hold it back any longer, as rivers flowed from his eyes quickly. He leaned forward and embraced Hester, who, after a full second, returned the gesture. They had lost everything, but gained each other. The two sat there, arms wrapped around each other in mutual support, until the yellow sun rose behind the ship exposing the extinct volcano that jutted out of the Sea of Khazak like a dark, popped pimple on a great blue face. As Tom steered the _Jenny Haniver_ down into the embrace of the old caldera, a feeling of gratitude washed over him as a realization made itself clear in his mind.

He may have lost London, but he was glad to have Hester with him now.


	5. The Sunless Country

**Chapter 5**

 **The Sunless Country**

* * *

London lay strewn about the Out-Country in a great debris field forty miles in diameter. It was in pieces, unrecognizable, like a toy broken upon the ground by an angry child. The wreckage exhaled poisonous smoke and noxious fumes into the sky in a black pillar tall enough to be seen from Batmunkh Gompa far to the east. Within that pillar, strange flashes of light illuminated the silhouettes of twisted metal and mountains of rubble. To any outside observer, there would be no sign of life.

Yet life remained, hidden beneath the stormy clouds of ash and dust. The world of London might have been mistaken for that of the Black Centuries, as the dark sky ripped and tore asunder in a primordial expression of chaos. But still, life existed among the entropy. It would be unfair to say that there were many living things in London, but there were plenty of dying ones. People stumbled blindly across a field of knives, steel contorted horribly into sharp daggers that poked up from the muddied ground. The shouts of dozens, of hundreds of men and women were muffled by their iron prisons, rooms melted shut by MEDUSA's wrath to become coffins for those trapped inside. Screams erupted randomly, dying slowly or quickly depending on the source. From time to time, long arcs of lightning burst between pieces of wreckage as the last of the ancient weapon's energy was expended into plasma.

It was as if London itself had ventured into the darkest reaches of the Sunless Country, a hellish waste from which none could return. Yet still there were survivors. Gut workers thrown clear of the carnage, Merchant Guildsmen who hid within the gondolas of their airships, men, women, and children from different areas of the city, high and low, lucky enough to survive the obliteration of St. Paul's and the vaporization of Top Tier, not to mention the complete destruction of the rest of the city. In the south-western portion of the ruin, these lost souls, the orphans of dead London, combed the wreckage for supplies: the food and water necessary for them to leave their certain deaths here for the promise of an uncertain fate among the Out-Country.

Many of them were burned, bruised, and broken. Once divided by Guilds and Tiers, they now congregated out of necessity. Either they will perish alone under the poisoned sky or they will join together and at least have others accompany them from this Sunless Country to the next. It took a strong leader to unite them, a person less injured than the rest to organize the search parties scavenging for the necessities necessary to leave this place. After Crome, no Engineer could be trusted, and no Historians could be found among the wreckage save one.

Herbert Melliphant found himself in charge of the dozens of survivors that crawled out of the broken buildings and scattered rubble on this side of the debris field. He found it easy, natural to take command of the shambling followers who he had pulled from the wreckage over the past three days. It turns out that if you shout loud enough and feign authority, people who had lost everything will obey with few questions. Those who objected were quickly dealt with, sporting new bruises over the old ones. It didn't take long before Melliphant's group equaled almost fifty strong, and with this number they would set out into the west before the sun set.

At a small clearing next to a jumble of broken buildings from Tier Five, the survivors' camp was quickly disassembled as the future refugees began to leave the ruins of their home. Melliphant sat at the controls of a strange vehicle he had found on the second day following London's collapse. It was a motor-powered wagon of sorts much like the Glacier-mobiles used by the more modernized Snowmads north of the Tannhauser Mountains, yet instead of skis and caterpillar tracks it sported two enormous screws that ran parallel along the underside of the carriage in order to propel the vehicle, its single occupant, and the supplies it carried in its wooden bed, through the muddy terrain of the Out-Country. On the side of the engine-hood in rose-colored lettering was the name of the strange automotive: 'Pink's Patent Out-Country Screw-Propelled Mud Wagon'.

Behind the machine, three large, roughly human-shaped figures helped move improbably large crates of food and water onto the bed of the wagon. Beneath their black, hooded, rubber coats emblazoned with red wheels upon the shoulders, bright green eyes shone in a deathly glow. They were Stalkers, the Resurrected prisoners of London's Deep Gut that Dr. Popjoy had found deactivated the first day after MEDUSA destroyed the city. As Melliphant had discovered, Popjoy was Dr. Trixie's right-hand man at K-Division and was taking the elevator from Top Tier to the Museum the night MEDUSA malfunctioned. Apparently he was sent to 'observe them in action', a phrase that made Melliphant's stomach turn.

After repairing the broken Stalkers, Popjoy put them to use pulling survivors out of the rubble. As supplies were limited, they were directed to only save those with a high chance of survival. As a result, none of the ex-Londoners in Melliphant's party were under the age of fifteen or over the age of sixty.

"It's only rational," Popjoy had said when Melliphant tried to protest, "In the Out-Country one must pull their own weight, or be left behind. The elderly will slow us down and the young cannot fend for themselves. Those too injured to walk will only drain our resources."

Melliphant did not argue. The concepts of morality and altruism are the first casualties of any survival situation. That night (he thought it was night as the cloud of smoke and ash above was a darker shade of black than before), he tried to block out the distant screams he heard through the broken window of his temporary bedroom at Pete's Eats café. He told himself that it was moving wreckage, steel grinding on steel. He tried to forget that his parents were dead, that his friends were dead, and that the owner of this establishment, Pete, lay dead in the adjacent room. He couldn't forget. He wouldn't forget.

Melliphant's sorrow turned to rage in his mind. _'It was that bitch, Katherine,'_ he thought as he gripped the ivory handle of his newly acquired cane, _'she and that Engineer must've blown up MEDUSA with that bomb. They're responsible.'_

He told this to Popjoy on the second day, after the Stalkers had rescued a group of Navigators from a collapsed building. Much to his surprise, Popjoy only laughed when Melliphant confessed that he had told the Lord Mayor of Katherine's plans, dooming his own Guild for the sake of the city and of himself.

"A simple bomb wouldn't have caused MEDUSA to malfunction in such a manner," Popjoy bore a yellow smile as he shook his head, "Dr. Splay installed fail-safes into the system in case Valentine failed to disable the Northern Air Fleet. The most a bomb would do is cut the power. Only an incorrect set or coordinates or a bad clearance code could have made the weapon overcharge as it did. If you never told Magnus of Katherine's plans, we might not have been in this predicament at all!"

The knowledge that he might be to blame for London's fate sat heavily on his shoulders that day. It poisoned every thought, clouded every judgement, gnawed at the back of his mind every passing moment until the blood pumped from his heart felt like a strange mixture of ice and fire. A cold, numbing pain combined with a searing rage that dulled his senses and focused his efforts.

Now, on the third morning after London, he and his band of survivors readied for departure, slinging bags of canned food and preserved algae cakes over their shoulders while they lugged great jugs of water along in wheelbarrows and small carts. As the black sky turned grey, they set out, with Melliphant's mud wagon leading the ragtag group into the unknown.

The refugees of London were startled by the appearance of the Out-Country. It wasn't the brown desolation they had come to expect from the Great Hunting Ground to the west. Not at all. Once their party left the shadow of the ash-clouds behind, they were amazed to see grass growing beneath their feet. Grass! Real, green, grass! And trees, too. Not the dead, brown twigs you see from time to time out in the Gallic Plain or north of the Sea of Khazak, but real forests of rhododendron and pine that stretched along the foothills of the Mountains of Heaven.

They travelled west, out of the debris field for the entire day, navigating around the swamps and lakes that intruded upon their path and slowed their progress to the point where by sunset London was still well within view, its carcass fuming amidst the steppes and giving short, eerie bursts of light every now and then. The travelling party would have liked to leave the corpse of dead London far beyond the horizon, but grew wary of the approaching dusk and made camp next to a taiga forest near a small creek.

They did everything in silence, building fires, erecting tents, cooking and eating food under the pale glow of moonlight, lest some savage beast indigenous to the woodlands discover them. They had little experience living on bare earth, much less living off of it. Their tents were crooked, their fires poorly built, their food was overcooked. They were frightened, cold, and damp, draped in stolen blankets and shambling about the unfamiliar terrain like troubled ghosts who have lost their way. They dare not speak, they dare not think, they dare not feel. They had left the Sunless Country of London behind, but their souls did not come with them.

* * *

It was nearly midnight when the air-squadron arrived at the ruins of London. The ragtag group of blimps, dirigibles, and balloons were slow, barely faster than the wind that blew treacherously hither and thither. There were almost three dozen of them, ranging from burly merchant freighters to meager single-engine taxi balloons. They had set off from the High Eyries that morning crewed almost exclusively by the junior officer graduates of the military college at Seven Tiger Mountain, young, fresh faces eager to avenge the lost Northern Air Fleet. With the majority of Shan Guo's military still in retreat to Tienjing, Sathya Kuranath, or the 'Wall-Flower', as they have come to call her, became the de facto leader of the Anti-Traction League in Batmunkh Gompa, commandeering refugee airships as they returned from the mountains and mooring them in the still-scorched hangers of the High Eyries, building a new, inferior fleet among the steel skeletons of the burnt Air Destroyers.

Now, she commanded this fleet, watching the Out-Country below her from the flight deck of an Achebe 2100 air-freighter. This was the first time the young Flight Commander had embarked on any expedition without the aid of a senior officer, and though her pilot, Lieutenant Cao Xi Dzhu, was a few years her elder, she outranked him by a significant margin. Dzhu expertly maneuvered the bulky airship, shouting orders beneath his concealing flight mask to the three other members of the crew, three brotherly airmen he referred to as the 'Tienjing Triplets', even though none of them were born within the same year and only two of them shared a father.

Dzhu was a man Sathya could trust, having been a close friend of Naga since they were both boys growing up in the cratered farmlands of South China. Dzhu was a few years older than Naga, and joined the military well before his friend did, signing up at Batmunkh Gompa before being quickly assigned as an observation balloonist at the Forward Outpost, a camouflaged bunker thirty miles ahead of the Shield Wall built to observe approaching cities.

It was an awful position, a hole that no enlisted soldier could be promoted out of. Yet Dzhu stayed there, making his way up to the rank of Lieutenant, remaining at his post even after the other soldiers manning the outpost fled upon hearing of Panzerstadt-Bayreuth's destruction. Now he piloted Sathya's flagship past the ruins of London in a large circle around the perimeter of the debris field, careful to stay clear of the billowing clouds of ink-black smoke emanating from the wreck.

"If only Naga could be here to see this!" Dzhu exclaimed after pulling the airship past a broken length of immense caterpillar tracks. "He's never seen a barbarian city before, much less the insides of one."

Sathya did not respond, scanning intently at the ground below for any signs of movement. She had left Naga behind to command the garrison at the Shield-Wall, an unheard of position for a newly graduated Officer Cadet to hold, even temporarily. But she trusted Naga more than any of the other low-ranking officers at Batmunkh Gompa, and far more than the higher ranking officers that had made the 'tactical retreat' to Tienjing.

Her hand absent-mindedly travelled to the hilt of the sword attached to her hip. It was Anna's weapon, a long, slightly curved blade forged from a rare, bluish metal for the aviatrix by a master swordsmith in Batmunkh Tsaka. Its crossguard swooped upwards into a vicious sword-breaking hook, and downwards towards the pommel to form a long handguard. Upon its sheath was inscribed many Shan Guonese characters as well as a flowing design of peony flower petals caught in a breeze. Though Anna had never given the sword a name, Sathya had taken to calling it after its previous owner, 'Feng Hua'. Sathya's grip tightened around the leather hilt as she surveyed the ruins further, her eyes drawn to a small wisp of smoke rising near the edge of the forest, not far from the edge of the city's debris field.

If Valentine still lived, she will be the one to kill him.

* * *

They heard the sound of the airship engines too late. A low buzz, barely noticeable above the howl of the wind sweeping through the valley, quickly turned into a roar of propeller blades directly overhead. Melliphant awoke to find his tent blown over in the gust, with frantic shouting and frenzied movement blundering about the campsite. He struggled to stand, climbing to his feet with his cane and shedding the bedsheets he had buried himself into hours before. As he struggled to dress himself, he dared to look up at the source of the droning din.

A motley collection of airships had surrounded the sky around the campsite, hovering thirty feet off of the ground. Searchlights blazed the ground, blinding the former Londoners as they ran to and fro aimlessly. A booming voice amplified by a loudspeaker cut through the cacophonous buzz.

"STAY WHERE YOU ARE," an accented female voice shouted in Anglish, "YOU ARE NOW PRISONERS OF THE ANTI-TRACTION LEAGUE. RESISTANCE WILL BE MET WITH DEADLY FORCE."

Very few heeded the order. People were gathering up their things, food, water, personal belongings, all as fast as they could. Melliphant had just dropped a small folding knife into his pocket and was slipping on his shoes when a heavy weight was pushed into his arms.

"Here, take this and run into the forest," Dr. Popjoy shouted as he handed him a strange, rigid backpack that sloshed with every movement. Melliphant struggled to loop the straps of the heavy container around his arms when a loud bang blasted through the air, echoing off the mountains and trees, and gaining the attention of everyone at the campsite.

Sathya stood at the foot of a rope ladder dropped from her airship. In her left hand was a smoking Shanti-Hatyara eight-cylinder revolver she had fired into the ground. Behind her, her men gathered, pointing a variety of weapons taken from the Shield Wall armory at the refugees. The people before them stopped dead in their tracks as the sound of the airship engines came to a halt. Some looked back towards the forest, searching for an escape route, but the way was blocked by a stony creek that flowed beside the edge of the trees.

"Where is Valentine?" Her voice quivered with anger as she spoke, breaking the fragile silence. The refugees were too afraid to speak.

"Where is he?" She shouted, advancing towards the dying campfire. She drew Anna's sword and pointed it towards the people before her, the light from the airships above gleaming on its blue, razor-sharp edge as it shook with rage.

"He's dead," Popjoy answered, "He died along with Crome and the rest of them when MEDUSA went off."

Sathya couldn't believe the little bald man that spoke to her. Valentine could not be dead! He must have escaped whatever happened to London. He must still be alive, hiding among the ruins, in the forest, or aboard the _13_ _th_ _Floor Elevator_ in the skies far away. She had to find him. She had to kill him.

"Lies!" she spat, raising her pistol, ready to blow the bald man away. Her finger curled around the trigger, itching to squeeze off a shot directly into the red wheel upon his forehead, when a large figure stepped into her line of fire, putting its large, black frame between Sathya and Popjoy.

Sathya's eyes widened upon seeing the creature. Humanoid in shape but not in form, the Resurrected Man stood nearly eight feet tall, with two green orbs staring unblinking from beneath its black hood that shrouded its face in shadow. Sathya had never heard of, much less seen a Stalker before. Few people in the Anti-Traction League have heard the legends of the immortal men of the Nomad Empires, and fewer still believed them to be true. But here it was, standing before them, silent, while two more of the things stepped forward to join the lead Stalker's flanks, protecting Popjoy with their bulk.

"What…" Sathya was at a loss for words. What was this creature? It moved forward, recognizing her pistol as a threat. As the Stalker stepped unflinchingly through the still-glowing coals, its arms outstretched, baring its long, steely claws. Horrified, Sathya's finger tightened involuntarily around the trigger of her revolver.

The first shot hit the Stalker directly below the neck, the pistol caliber round bouncing harmlessly off of its armored breastplate and leaving only a small hole in its rubber coat. The first gunshot did nothing, but others followed, releasing a torrent of lead shot and steel quarrels upon the advancing Resurrected Men. Sathya's men barely bothered to aim their weapons, firing at the Stalkers, the refugees, and the trees behind them all at once.

Melliphant turned to run after the first shot, pushing past several other Londoners to reach the stream and the forest that lay beyond. Screams broke out left and right before being drowned in gunfire. Melliphant reached the creek in a frenzied sprint, aiming to jump to the other side and run for the trees, when a great force hit him in the back.

Melliphant fell, face-first into the stream as the air was forced from his lungs, only to be replaced by the rushing mountain water of the creek. His arms flailed for dry land. He had no idea how to swim, but even if he did, it wouldn't help him as the current dragged him downstream, trailing red liquid as he flowed down the creek. It wasn't long before his head hit an errant rock and his world went black, lost amidst raging waters and echoing gunshots.


	6. The Banished Man

**Chapter 6**

 **The Banished Man**

Black Island was an empty place. While before, Tom had remembered the extinct volcano caldera to be bustling with aviators and fishermen, now most of the shacks and huts were abandoned and boarded up as the population scattered in the wake of MEDUSA. Only a few dozen inhabitants remained in the town, those without a boat or an airship and those who scoffed at the supposed range of London's superweapon. News travelled slowly among the diaspora, and few had heard of London's destruction, as only one airship had survived seeing the end of the traction city.

While the disabled _Jenny Haniver_ was moored at the only open airdock in town, Hester took Tom to the local clinic, where the familiar turbaned doctor, Ibrahim Nazghul, laid him down upon a table and removed his bandages to observe his broken ribs. Tom struggled to see them, but quickly looked away from the black and blue bruises that stole the breath from his lungs as soon as they were free of their prison of tightly wrapped cloth.

"I must say, Thomas," the physician said as he shook his head disapprovingly, "Whatever you did at Batmunkh Gompa did not help the healing process at all. If anything, your ribs are more damaged than before. I thought Feng Hua was supposed to take care of you."

Tom didn't reply, the pain in his chest, both in his ribs and deeper, prevented him from telling the kindly doctor of Anna's fate. Instead, Hester spoke up from her chair across the room where she observed Tom's pain with an expression of what Tom guessed, what Tom hoped, was sympathy.

"Anna…" She struggled to find the words, "Anna died at the Shield Wall. She left the _Jenny_ to us."

Nazghul frowned. He did not know Anna well, but he always enjoyed speaking to her every time she graced his clinic with an unfortunate 'accident' she received on the Bird Roads. He remembered all of them. Broken hands and glass cuts from bar-room brawls, the occasional stabbing from a trade deal gone wrong, even a gunshot wound she wouldn't tell him the origin of. He always told her that her reckless acquisition of injuries would kill her one day. He always hoped he would be wrong.

He sighed and looked again at Tom. "You won't be able to fly with these injuries. Until you're ribs are healed, you'll have to stay here on Black Island."

"How long will that take?" Tom groaned in pain.

"Two weeks at the least. I'll have to change the bandages daily. No strenuous exercise."

Hester gave a lopsided smile, "That's just about the same amount of time it'll take for the mechanic to fix the _Jenny_. We can rent a room somewhere in town in the meantime."

Nazghul gave the scarred girl a kindly smile as he wrapped Tom's torso in a set of fresh bandages, "You can stay here in my children's room. I sent them away with my wife after hearing of MEDUSA and they shouldn't be back for another month. That way I can keep an eye on those ribs and make sure they heal properly."

Tom and Hester thanked the doctor for his hospitality and set out to check on Anna's, on their airship. They were surprised to find that their ship, once the only one in the harbor, was now accompanied by a dozen others, eleven of them small semi-rigid blimps painted sky-blue and attached end to end to each other with ropes and cables. At the front of the line of airships berthed at the long, crescent-shaped harbor was a merchant freighter, Tom recognized it as a London-built Gideon 900, an older model popular after the Iron Winter of 919 TE. Upon its dark grey sides in faded white paint was labelled: 'Maxwell & Sons Air Shipping Ltd.'

"A Sky-Train!" Tom exclaimed, "I thought nobody used them anymore!"

"Nobody smart at least."

The voice came from behind them, and Tom and Hester turned to find an older man standing there, eyes fixed beyond them at the red airship moored at the end of the harbor. He wore a brown fleece-lined flight jacket that clashed somewhat with his navy blue pants and did nothing to draw attention away from his bushy grey mustache that hid his upper lip like a shaggy cloak. But what drew Tom's gaze wasn't his clothes or his mustache or his large flat-cap that sat above a mess of short, grey hair, it was the mark that lay upon the old man's wrinkled forehead. Above his darkened eyebrows was a bold, black 'X', faded over the years by the winds of the Bird Roads. It took Tom a few seconds to recognize that tattoo, a mere footnote in the London Guide of Guildmarks.

It was the mark of the Banished Man, one who was exiled from London and forbidden to return, destined to roam the Out-Country for the rest of their lives.

"Is that your ship?" the man asked in a hoarse voice. It wasn't a London accent, though there were some elements there. His words rose through his throat like an old chimney, as if he was an old lion who had roared his voice away.

Hester pulled up her scarf to hide her face. Until then, she was comfortable walking around the abandoned town unshawled with only Tom to see her. She tensed in the presence of this stranger, and her hand instinctively reached for where she usually sheathed her knives, only to have the disappointing realization that she had lost it after being captured on London.

Tom managed to nod to the man, his eyes remaining fixed upon the mark above his brow. The old man's gaze turned to Tom.

"Where is Anna Fang?" He asked, his eyes narrowing upon Tom in a way that made his ribs somehow hurt more than before. Still, he managed a reply.

"She's dead." It was all he could get out. Would he and Hester have to explain what happened to every person they came across? Would they have to lie and tell them that with her dying breath, Anna gave the _Jenny_ to them? How did this man know Anna anyway?

"How?" The man's expression seemed not to change, yet his eyes betrayed his disappointment.

"She was killed in a duel. Valentine killed her at the Shield Wall."

"Valentine…" The man gave a small sigh, "Pity. I would like to have seen her again after all these years."

"Who are you?" Hester asked, growing impatient.

"My name is Karl Anders," he answered, "I'm an old friend of Anna's."

* * *

Anders invited Tom and Hester to dine with him at the only restaurant still open in town, an oyster bar named the Mermaid's Purse. Tom's curiosity of the man was the only reason they accepted, despite Hester's lingering suspicions. They sat at a rickety table crafted out of driftwood and old crabber cages under the dim light of a few homemade beeswax candles, and while Hester gladly ate the shellfish placed before her, Tom could only look unappetized at the strange, briny creatures held within the bowl of their own shells. A fourth person joined them: a girl, a bit younger than Hester with a dark, North African complexion and short, black hair. She said nothing, and quietly lapped up a bowl of oyster soup.

"This here is Spokes," Anders said, introducing the silent girl. "She's my engineer and co-pilot. Doesn't speak much, but I've never found anyone with a better knack for engines."

"Why is she named Spokes?" Tom asked.

"She was a slave I bought at an auction in Benghazi. All of them have names like that. 'Pulley', 'Hoist', 'Hammer', things they are good at, I guess."

"She's a slave?!" Hester gripped her fork tightly, her mouth twisted into a snarl.

"No, no, no." Anders quickly answered, "She's entirely free. A citizen of Manchester, in fact. She gets paid a hefty percentage of the profits of every delivery we make."

"And her parents?" Hester was still skeptical.

"Unfortunately deceased. Understand that I bought her to set her free, to take her in, to give her a real job…"

Anders looked over to where Spokes was sitting to find that she had slipped away during the discussion, leaving an empty bowl at her spot.

"Heh." He shook his head, "Still as quiet as ever."

"So how did you know Miss Fang?" Tom asked, pushing his full plate towards Hester who gladly started slurping the oysters out of their shells.

"That's a question with a really long answer, and one that I could ask you just as well." He popped an ugly looking prawn into his mouth, and Tom decided at that point that he did not care much for seafood. "How did you two come to possess Anna's ship?"

His stare was accusing, in a way that offended Hester. "We didn't kill her, if that's what you're implying."

He scoffed, "I don't think the two of you could have brought her down if her hands were tied behind her back. A scrawny, scarred mossie girl and a London kid against the Wind Flower? No. I believe your story about the duel with Valentine. Neither of you seem like the killing type anyway. At least, not yet."

Tom shifted uncomfortably in his seat, his mind turning to the horrified faces of Pewsey and Gench, and to the death throes of Shrike on the eastern shore of the island. Anders noticed his discomfort, and was about to comment when (thankfully) the owner and sole employee of the restaurant, a local man named Baku, walked by to refill Anders' wine cup for the fourth time that night. Despite the amount of drink he had consumed, Anders seemed no different in speech or action. Noticing Tom fidgeting, the proprietor spoke up in broken Anglish.

"You want wine, Thomaz Stalker-killer?"

The title made Anders' raise a bushy eyebrow, and he exchanged a glance with Hester, whose eye flicked back in response. Tom refused, and the three returned to their conversation.

"Honestly," Anders started once Baku left earshot, "It really doesn't matter how you met Anna or how you have her ship. If you were thieves you wouldn't have agreed to dine with a stranger. Doing things like that is a good way to get yourselves killed, mind you. We'll have plenty of time to trade stories later, if you accept my offer."

Tom looked back at the old man, confused. "Your offer? What offer?"

"I need to make a delivery with the Sky-Train, but the engines on my lead airship aren't powerful enough for the load in the contract. I've been looking to hire another airship to act as a second aeromotive and the _Jenny Haniver_ is more than capable for the job. I'm willing to offer a percentage of the profits as payment. Are you interested?"

Tom turned to Hester, who started asking a barrage of questions. What was to be delivered? Who was it for? Where was it coming from/going to? What money was to be made?

Anders answered them all. "It's a shipment of archeology equipment we're picking up in the Yerevan conurbation and delivering to Alex-Ria at their dig site in Giza. We're expecting to gain about two tons of aluminium bullion. That's about…" He stopped to think for a second, counting with his fingers and mouthing calculations. "Three hundred and sixty thousand London Quirkes by '97 standards, though I expect Quirkes have fallen in value since then."

Tom gaped at the numbers. He knew that since the techniques the Ancients used to refine aluminium were lost, the metal became exceedingly precious, especially in the air trade as its light weight allowed it to be transported easily, but he never imagined that it would be like this. The chest aboard the _Jenny_ contained less than half the value of what Anders proposed, and most of that was going to the airship's repairs. This was an opportunity that could not be missed.

Hester was still skeptical. "What percentage would we get?"

"Twenty-five percent. A quarter of the profits."

"Half." Hester was a novice to price negotiation, but she knew her cards well. "Where else could you find another airship? It will be months until they stop fleeing this part of the Hunting Ground. We're all you got."

"I can give you two a third, and no more. Otherwise I'll pay Baku to inflate his blimp and do the job for half that."

"You said that the _Jenny_ was perfect for the job," Tom chimed in, "we can do it for thirty-five percent, plus the cost of repairs for the _Jenny Haniver_."

"Done." Anders had seen the state of the airship. What he was offering Tom and Hester was far more than he would offer in any other situation, but this was an extraordinary circumstance. He shook their hands, paid for the table, and left the two young aviators to discuss their new lives among the sky.

* * *

It was past dusk when Hester left Dr. Nazghul's house, slipping silently from the room she shared with a now-sleeping Tom Natsworthy and across the squeaky floorboards to the front door. She crept through the dark streets of the small town, her eye quickly adjusting to the grey outlines of empty buildings and abandoned carts and stalls lit by pale starlight unpolluted by streetlamps or candles. She made her way to the western edge of town, walking past boarded up storefronts and locked homes in a path she struggled to recall from memory. In the darkness she failed to spot or notice the silhouette that watched her from the shadows.

"It's a bit late for a stroll, Miss. Shaw."

Hester rounded to face her would-be assailant, clutching at the large scalpel she had 'borrowed' from Dr. Nazghul's surgical supplies and stuffed into her belt. Her hand relaxed when she recognized the figure.

"Anders!" The man stepped into the street, revealing his aged face to the starlight. "What are you doing here?"

"I could ask you the same question, but I have a pretty good idea already. I thought I could offer a bit of help." Anders tossed an object to Hester, who barely caught it in both hands. It was a shovel.

"What? How…"

"When I first got here, Baku told me about how a boy slew a steel djinn along the western side of the crater. A long time ago I encountered a similar creature. A Stalker known only as the Collector. With Anna's help, we were able to destroy it, but I know how hard those things are to kill."

Hester looked up from the shovel in her hands to see that Anders had brought his own. She was about to speak when Anders started again.

"Anna told me of another Stalker, one that had a name. I heard the legends, how it was the sole survivor of the Lazarus Brigade, how it was a veteran of the Battle of Three Dry Ships, how it served as an executioner in Paris and later became a bounty hunter aboard the village of Strole. I also heard of how it adopted a daughter, a disfigured orphan girl that they called 'Death's Little Helper'."

He stared at her now, his eyes filled with… something. Was it pity? Disgust? Hester couldn't tell.

"You were that little girl, weren't you?"

Hester nodded, unable to speak. It was then that she heard the whirring noise of a four cylinder engine approaching along the road. Behind a pair of bright headlights was a small excursion buggy, a Pink's Patent Landshark 6x6 intended to be carried aboard larger airships. Behind the control levers was Spokes, who was dwarfed even by the tiny cockpit in which she sat in. She looked to Anders and then Hester, betraying no emotion in the process. Though she said nothing, the length of time she spent staring at Hester's shawled face indicated an unspoken question to Anders, who gave the answer to Hester instead.

"Spokes here is going to take us to the western shore, so that we can bury your friend. Nobody, not even a Resurrected Man, should be left to rot in the swamp."

As the three travelled beneath the starlit shadow of Black Island's crater and started plowing through the boggy fields outside of the town, Hester felt glad to have run into Anders when she did. The trail was rough and pocketed with mud pits and gnarled roots, to the degree where Hester doubted her leg, which was still healing from the crossbow bolt it received in London, could weather the trek. She had forgotten how long the journey from the hillside to the town had been even on horseback, as her mind then had stewed with grief and anger. She felt those feelings bubble up again, but the anger she felt was no longer against Tom; she had forgiven him for Shrike's death rather quickly in her opinion. The anger she felt had no real target, no real center. It came with the realization that now, losing Shrike, she was once again an orphan, once again alone.

Well, almost alone.

"What do you think of that boy, Tom?" Anders asked from his bench opposite to hers, "Have you two been travelling together for long?"

"We only met a short while ago, aboard London," Hester answered, giving a quick version of the story, had it really only been a few days? "He was a Historian, or something, and he sort of… stopped me from doing something stupid."

Hester was glad that Tom stopped her from killing Valentine that day. Otherwise she would never have met him. "We ended up falling out of London and had to catch up with it. He helped me out along the way, as did Anna. But when we finally got back to London…"

Hester did not mourn for London, not truly. She hated to see Tom grieve. To see him feel what she felt whenever she thought about her parents: Pandora, David, and, yes, even Shrike. "He didn't deserve to lose so much. Tom saw his city die, his world go up in flames. After what he's done for me, I can't just let him end up like… like me!"

She didn't know what it was that caused her to burst out like that, as if she had walked into a crowded market and removed her scarf for all the world to see. Hit by a sudden pang of shame, she lifted her shawl high on her face, making sure it obscured her empty eye socket and mangled nose.

Even in the dark, Anders' eyes shone with nothing but sincerity. "The world is a cruel place at times, Hester, but you know that only too well." He looked over his shoulder to Spokes, who wordlessly guided the small rover down the slope towards the wave-swept shore below. "Spokes lost her family to slavers, in a way she still won't tell me about. Anna lost her parents the same way aboard Arkangel. I've lost my family, my job, and my home long ago. We lose everything, yet still we live, still we linger. We owe it to ourselves to find out why, to have a reason for living."

"What's yours?" Hester asked.

Anders couldn't answer, glancing from Hester to his feet, then towards Spokes, who suddenly spoke up.

"We're here."

The bog was black. Blacker than the night sky above. Blacker than it seemed to have been the night Shrike strode out of the darkness, his two gleaming eyes shining like poisoned stars pulled from the heavens. Now, with his eyes darkened for the first time in centuries, the bog was once again home to the blackness.

Even with the buggy's headlights illuminating the potholed bed of the marsh, the bog seemed to swallow light, just as it had done to Chrysler Peavey not too long ago. The bodies of the rest of his crew were still there, save Janny Maggs, who had also fallen into a similar patch of bog, never to be seen again. Ames was the first one that they found, his lifeless corpse propped up against a large rock that protruded from the bed of the marsh, his shirt stained with mud, or was it blood? Hester couldn't tell. Hester didn't care.

The next body they found was Mungo's, or at least the next body parts. His head was laid on the ground two yards away from the rest of him, his face still contorted in visible shock and fear, despite the decay. Hester picked up the dead pirate's hand cannon from a patch of mud where Mungo had discarded it. She then brushed off a hefty layer of grime and observed it in the light, noting the etchings and stampings left both by the gunsmith and the pirate who, in all probability, killed the original owner. Most of the markings were in a Germanic language, but a few more recent ones were scratched into the barrel and the receiver, most of them containing expletives or tally marks. The gun was empty, and the trigger mechanism was filled with debris, but with a bit of care and cleaning, it might work again. Hester stuffed the pistol into her belt and continued on.

The body of Shrike, a great iron carcass that shone in the reflection of Anders' flashlight, was sprawled out upon a flat piece of damp grass atop a small hill. For the first time, Hester was able to actually notice the sheer damage Shrike had taken in his pursuit of her. His long, black coat had virtually disintegrated by now, clothing his armored form in little more than bullet strewn rags that hung over his corpse in loose strips of cloth. One of Shrike's legs looked inverted, as if a great force had bent his knee the wrong way. His arms were no better, reduced to a twisted ruin with both claws torn away. His left arm ended in a sharp point above the elbow that was still coated in the dried blood of Ames and Mungo, but beneath his torso, another liquid pooled from the many holes in his armor.

Hester gave a small gasp upon seeing the wounds in Shrike's chest. Large, round ones, from where Mungo's hand cannon had repeatedly pierced his iron-clad skin and small, jagged dents from Maggs' machine gun littered his body. But the largest wound, the fatal blow Tom struck, extended out of his breastplate where his heart used to be. Mungo's cutlass jutted from a tear deep and wide enough that Hester could see straight through to the stained black grass below.

What really drew Hester's gaze, though, was Shrike's eyes. Once, they had been a constant in Hester's life. Eternally shining a sickly green glow, one that would, to anyone else, inspire terror and despair, but to Hester… She remembered the long nights laying upon a cot in Shrike's den in Strole, her face covered in bandages. Her thoughts were erratic back then; confused and angry, but with no knowledge why. She learned to feel safe under the twin green night-lights that shone from Shrike's head. It was calming, it was reassuring. But now, they were gone, never to shine again.

Anders stepped forward towards the carcass, and before Hester could protest, he wretched the sword from Shrike's chest and held it up to his flashlight. Mungo's cutlass, a stolen relic from some poor town Tunbridge Wheels had eaten, was surprisingly intact for its time in the swampy conditions. Rust coated its steel handguard here and there, but the majority of the blade was stained black by whatever liquid poured from the Stalker's body, coating and preserving the metal. Anders turned and held the sword out to Hester, hilt-first.

"You should keep this," Anders offered, "The Bird Roads are a dangerous path to tread. The headless one over there still has the sheath."

As Hester took the cutlass by the rayskin hilt, Spokes cut in, "You should give it a name. All the best swords have names in the stories. Something like Stalkersbane or the Blackblade…"

"It doesn't need a name." Hester took the sheath from Mungo's body and strapped the sword across her waist. Only heroes have swords with names, and if anyone was the hero in this world, it was Tom.

Anders, Spokes, and Hester gathered their shovels from the buggy in silence, they chose the gravesites in silence, and they broke ground in silence. Spokes dug her hole beside the headless body of Mungo, working quickly despite the shovel's relatively large size compared to her. Anders made his ditch alongside Ames, whose tall, lanky corpse required one of equal proportions.

Hester chose to dig Shrike's grave alone, even though his carcass necessitated an immense hole. Her hands filled with splinters as she dug her shovel deep into the wet ground. Her boots filled with mud as the hole grew deeper. Sweat poured from her furrowed brow as she dug. She didn't bother to wipe it away, she didn't protest when the shovels of Anders and Spokes joined her after each of them had finished their respective graves. They dug in silence, with only the songs of the frogs and insects accompanying the sounds of each shovel stroke.

The three kept their silence as they rolled Shrike's body into the grave. They didn't say a word as they shoveled earth back into the ditch, burying the Stalker's features with every shovelful of mud. Hester said nothing as the dirt covered the corpse's legs, his arms, his torso, and his face. He had been dead for over five hundred years, and only now was he given a burial.


End file.
